We’re in the second week of our sermon series, “Stone Tablets in a Wireless World”. We’re talking about how, as Christians, we can communicate the message of the Bible, a message of eternal truth, to a society that is so different than society was two or three thousand years ago when the Bible was written.
We talked last week about the need
to convince people that there is such a thing as truth at all, because a
growing number of people don’t believe that absolute truth exists. Today we’re going to talk about a different
problem. Assuming we can get people to
agree that there is such a thing as truth, how do we show them where it comes
from?
Back when the Bible was written,
there was not much disagreement about that.
The truth, all truth, came from God.
Even people who did not believe in the God of the Bible thought that
truth came from whatever god or gods they happened to worship. In our reading from Isaiah, God said “I, the
Lord, speak the truth; I declare what is right.” Pretty much everyone who read those words back when they were
written would’ve said, “Yes, that’s right.
The Lord speaks the truth. Truth
comes from God.”
We really don’t have that kind of
general agreement any more. We live in
an age of skepticism. If we tell people
who are not Christians that we have God’s truth, a lot of them will respond,
“Oh, yeah? Why should I believe
you? Why should I believe that what you
say is the word of God just because some primitive culture said it was
thousands of years ago? I want you to
prove to me that you have the word of God.
Then maybe I’ll believe it.”
Now, if we’ve lived most of our
lives in a society that takes Christian faith seriously, we might be a little
offended at that. If we think about it,
though, for people who are not Christians, that’s a perfectly reasonable
position to take. After all, this world
is full of frauds. It’s full of
hustlers. It’s full of fakes and
charlatans. Anyone who’s become an
adult has run into them. In fact,
sometimes we run into them before we become adults.
And, unfortunately, some of these
frauds and hustlers and fakes claim to be religious. Some of them even claim to be Christian. If you think a little, you can think of all
kinds of people who claimed to speaking God’s truth when in fact they were
mostly interested in lining their pockets.
If you’ve heard about those people, and especially if you’ve ever been
taken in by one of those people, it’s understandable why you’d be pretty slow
to believe the next person that came along claiming to have God’s truth.
This is not all new, of
course. There have always been people
who are skeptical of whether Christians have God’s truth. In the gospel reading for today, we heard
about one of them, Thomas.
Think about this story a little
bit. Thomas was one of the twelve
disciples. He was one of Jesus’ inner
circle, one of the people closest to Jesus while he was on earth. He’d heard firsthand when Jesus said that he
was going to rise from the dead. Then,
the other disciples tell him that it actually happened. They tell him Jesus actually did rise from
the dead. They tell him they know it’s
true because they saw it for themselves.
And Thomas does not believe
them. Thomas said, “I’m going to need
proof, and until I get proof, I’m not going to believe you.” Thomas, one of the original twelve
disciples, was a skeptic, and he was a skeptic about something he’d heard Jesus
say with his own ears. If even Thomas,
who was there with Jesus, could be a skeptic, we cannot be too hard on people
of today who are skeptical, too.
Add to that the fact that we live
in an era of science. There are new
scientific discoveries made all the time.
We’ve learned all kinds of things about the universe and how it
works. We’ve learned all kinds of
things about life and how it works.
We’re learning more all the time.
A lot of ideas that were once accepted as true have been proven wrong by
science, and a lot of ideas that were laughed at years ago are now accepted as
true. It’s perfectly understandable
that people who are used to hearing scientific explanations for things would be
slow to accept words written thousands of years ago as being true. It’s understandable why, when we tell them
that we, as Christians, have God’s truth, they would say, “Oh, yeah? Prove it.”
The thing is, we cannot do
that. We cannot prove that we have
God’s truth. We can tell people what we
believe and why we believe it. We can
give reasons and provide evidence to back up those reasons. But we cannot prove that we have God’s
truth. God does not provide us with
proof. God provides us with evidence,
and asks us to have faith.
So what do we do? How do we communicate God’s truth to people
who don’t believe truth comes from God?
That brings us to our story from
Matthew. John the Baptizer sent
messengers to Jesus with a simple question.
He wanted to know whether Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah or not. He wanted to know whether Jesus actually had
God’s truth.
Jesus did not make any big
proclamation about it. He did not make
any claims at all for himself. He
simply told them, report to John what you see here. Do you see that the blind can see, the lame can walk, lepers are
healed, the deaf can hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed
to the poor? That’s what’s going on
here. Just tell that to John. John knows what the Messiah is supposed to
do. He’ll know whether that fits the
definition or not. If it does, then
there’s the proof right there.
I think maybe that’s the way to go
about answering people who want proof that we, as Christians have God’s
truth. Ask them what they see us, as
Christians, doing. Do they see us
helping the poor and the sick? Do they
see us helping those who are hurting, for whatever reason? Do they see us treating people with respect
and compassion, no matter who they are, where they come from, or what they look
like? Do they see us caring for each
other, with no exceptions? Do they see
us treating everyone with love?
Skeptics know what the people of God are supposed to do. They’ll know if what we’re doing fits the
definition or not. If it does, then
that’s the proof right there.
The thing is, that puts a lot of
responsibility on us, right? Each one
of us is a representative of the people of God, every day of our lives. If we’re going to ask people to judge
whether we have God’s truth by watching our actions, then we’d better make sure
our actions show that we have God’s truth.
We’d better act the way the people of God are supposed to act.
Our belief in God’s truth is
revealed by our actions, much more than our words. If people know we claim to be Christians, then each day, we give
an example to them of how a Christian behaves.
The poet Edgar A. Guest wrote, “I’d rather see a sermon than hear one
any day.” If people know we claim to be
Christians, then they see each one of us giving a sermon each day. Each of us, by our actions, is demonstrating
to people what we believe God’s truth to be.
That’s a heavy responsibility. Maybe you’re thinking, that’s more than I
can handle. I’m only human. I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. No
matter how hard I try, I cannot make my every word and action show God’s truth.
Well, you’re right, of course. But people know that. No one expects us to be perfect. In fact, people tend to be suspicious of
someone who looks like they’re too perfect.
What people want to know is, when we do make mistakes, when we do
mess up, what do we do? Do we try to
bluff our way through and pretend the mistake did not happen? Do we try to cover up our mistakes so no one
will see them? Do we try to shift the
blame to someone else? Or do we admit
our mistakes, deal with the consequences of them, and ask for forgiveness from
anyone we’ve wronged?
Your life is a sermon. My life is a sermon. Each of our lives is a sermon to people who
do not know God’s truth. If we let
people know we’re Christians, what those people think a Christian is will be
shaped by how they see us living our lives.
God’s love is as much the truth
today as it was three thousand years ago.
The need of people to be loved is as much the truth today as it was
three thousand years ago. If people see
us showing love to everyone, no matter what, they’ll know we have God’s
truth. That’s one of the best ways we
can communicate the truth that’s found on stone tablets to a wireless world.
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